THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



303 



orchard of Mr. A. Griffin, who with a sadden- 

 ed countenance, pointed to his once thrifty and 

 productive orchard, how totally destroyed by 

 the application of tar and linseed oil. It ap- 

 pears that he had heard of the success of the 

 experiment as tried by 0. S. Rathburn, of 

 Brookfield, and resolved to make the trial on 

 his own orchard, the result of which was the 

 entire destruction of a beautiful and bearing 

 orchard. 



The structure of woody plants .consists prin- 

 cipally of woody tissue or fibre and cellular 

 tissue. These two tissues exist in relation to 

 each other in different plants in different pro- 

 portions. Trees and shrubs are mostly woody 

 fibre, while soft, succulent herbs are almost 

 entirely composed of cellular tissue. 



" When the stem is first called into exis- 

 tence, it is merely a small portion of cellular 

 tissue : an organic substance, possessing nei- 

 ther strength nor tenacity, and altogether un- 

 suited to the purposes for which the .stem is 

 destined. If such matter formed exclusively 

 its solid contents, the stem would have neither 

 toughness nor strength, but would be brittle 

 like a mushroom, or like those parts of plants 

 of which cellular tissue is the exclusive com- 

 ponent ; su'cn, for example, as the club-shaped 

 spadix of an Arum, or the Soft prickles of a 

 young rose branch. Nature, however, from 

 the first moment that the rudiment of a leaf 

 appears upon the growing point of a stem, oc- 

 cupies herself with the formation of woody 

 matter, consisting of tough tubes of extreme 

 fineness, which take their rise in the leaves, and 

 which, thence passing downwards through the 

 cellular tissue, are incorporated with the latter, 

 to which they give the necessary degree of 

 strength and flexibility. In trees and shrubs 

 they combine intimately with each other, and 

 so form what is properly called the wood and 

 inner bark ; in herbaceous and annual plants, 

 they constitute a lax fibrous matter. No woody 

 matter appears till the first leaf, or the seed- 

 leaves, have begun to act ; it always arises from 

 their bases ; it is abundant, on the contrary, in 

 proportion to the strength, number and devel- 

 opment of the leaves ; and in their absence is 

 absent also 



*• When woody matter is first plunged into 

 the cellular tissue of the nascant stem, it forms 

 a circle a little within the circumference of the 

 stem, whose interior it thus separates into two 

 parts ; namely, the bark or the superficial, and 

 the pith or the central portion , or, in what 

 are called Endogens, into a superficial coating 

 analogous to bark, and a central confused, mass 

 of wood and pith intermingled. The effect of 

 this, in Exogens, is, to divide the interior of a 



perennial stem into three parts, the pith, the 

 wood, and the bark. 



"As the cellular tissue of the stem is not 

 sensibly lengthened more in one direction than 

 in another, and as it is the only kind of organ- 

 ic matter that in stems increases laterally, it 

 is sometimes convenient to speak of it under 

 the name of the horizontal system; and, for 

 a similar reason, to designate the woody tubes 

 which are plunged among it, and which only 

 increase by addition of new tubes having the 

 same direction as themselves, as the perpen- 

 dicular system. 



"Wood properly so called, and liber or inner 

 bark, consist, in Exogens, of the perpendicular 

 system, for the most part ; while the pith and 

 external rind or bark are chiefly formed of the 

 horizontal system. The two latter are connec- 

 ted by cellular tissue, which, when it is pressed 

 into thin plates by the woody tubes that pass 

 through it, acquires the name of medullary 

 rays. It is important, for the due explanation 

 of certain phenomena connected with cultiva- 

 tion, to understand this point correctly; and 

 to remember that, while the perpendicular sys- 

 tem is distributed through the wood and bark, 

 the horizontal system consists of pith, outer 

 bark, and the medullary processes which con- 

 nect these two in Endogens, and of irregular 

 cellular tissue analogous to medullary rays in 

 Endogens. So that the stem of a plant is not 

 inaptly compared to a piece of linen, the hori- 

 zontal cellular system representing the woof, 

 and the woody system the warp." 



From the above explanation, we see that 

 there is an extensive free communication be- 

 tween the atmosphere and every internal por- 

 tion of a plant, and numberless facts similar to 

 those we have presented, prove conclusively' 

 that this arrangement cannot be violated with 

 impunity — but that if it is not always fatal to 

 the life of the plant, it is injurious in a very 

 serious degree. 



Whitewash. — Poor whitewash is serious 

 injury to a wall ceiling, and when once on, it i^ 

 difficult to get it off or properly cover it, and 

 produce a clear white appearance. This is the 

 season for cleaning up, and we will give the 

 recipe for a first rate wash : Quick lime, slacked 

 by boiling water, stirring it until so slacked. 

 Then dissolve in water white vitriol, (sulphate 

 of zinc,) which you get at the druggists, at 

 the rate of two pounds of zinc to a half bar- 

 rel of whitewash, making it of the consistency 

 of rich milk. This sulphate of zinc will cause 

 the wash to harden, and to prevent the lime 

 from rubbing off \ a pound of fine salt should 

 be thrown into it. 



